Day 7

Woke up this morning with clumps of ice cluttering the floor. Okay, not really, but it was frigid when Dan’s alarm went off at six AM. None of us wanted to get up in the freezing cold, though, so we slept an hour later with the snooze follow ups every 10 minutes. Haha. This also had an influence in all of us wearing jeans today.

Today was muggy. Not hot (surprisingly, it has not been that hot yet to date), but very humid. We started the day teaching antonyms & homonyms. I’m glad 10 minutes before my lesson someone told me homonyms weren’t just words that rhyme, but words that sound the same but are spelled differently. I mean, I guess I would have seen that when I did the worksheets, but I guess I just somehow thought they were just words that rhyme. Maybe that’s homophone.

Antonyms, idioms of the day went well. That’s all the teaching I had for the morning. Then two periods of spelling bee meets Jenga. They were a little more mellow today, but we still had a good amount of fun.

Lunch today was glorious. Best lunch of the week. Chicken & potatoes with amazing sauce that I poured over the rice & red pepper soup (classic) and probably something else I’m forgetting. Or didn’t eat/didn’t take. It made me very happy. We had to take a picture afterwards with the principal and staff of the camp, and then had a meeting with the principal while snacking on ice cream. I had this cone that was Americanly patriotic, red white and blue, and had pop rocks in it. I think they were made for the 4th of July. Very firework-ish.

After lunch, we had to teach about homonyms. Eric made a killer powerpoint for us to use. After that, I asked what they wanted to learn about – and I taught them phrases to use during travel. Oh, I didn’t mention, but today I named all my kids English names so I could call on them. From the back of my class, I had Anymore, Earbud, Marshmellow, Matt Damon, Brittney Spears, Michael Jackson, Soap, Justin Beiber, Jerk (he picked it, I didn’t), Afro, Oprah Winfrey, Harry Potter, Emma Watson (somehow when they pronounce this it always sounds like ‘mouse’), Bart Simpson, Old man (he had gray hairs), & Avatar. Helped so much – and made everyone laugh. Afro is my favorite. He is a tall kid that sits in the back.

Two more periods of spelling/Jenga. In the first period, the kids legitimately didn’t want to do anything. They were sleepy, lethargic, and they wouldn’t try to even spell some words. At one point, I was at whit’s end, and Amanda walked in to ask me a question. She saw that I wasn’t having much luck, so she asked to have a go at it, while I watched over her art class. What happened next can hardly be described. Although, I have seen a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, and one of them provided a great parallel to what I was feeling. The surgeons from the show discover the dermatology section of the hospital, where everyone is calm, there is no emergencies, and they can relax. That is how I felt – no crazy motivation kids who were unwilling to learn, no shouting or raising my voice, I just got to sit quietly and watch them work. It was a haven of awesomeness.

I eventually had to go back, but it was ok. I was refreshed. After the spelling bee rotations were over, the kids all had to do a school-wide scavenger hunt, where they had to find all different landmarks using clues and get a picture of them on their cell phones. That seemed cool – we got the judge them at the end and get food.

Dan, Eric, and I filmed a documentary tonight about life in Korea. Afterwards, we went to dinner, which was awesome clear dumpling soup and these really good clear noodles. We ate A LOT at dinner tonight because the food was better than usual and didn’t consist of any red peppers (santo!).

After dinner, there was a school wide pop song contest. We were the judges as the foreign teachers. And at the end, we got to perform “Bye Bye Bye.” For those of you who know me, you know that secretly I always wanted to be in a boy band (at least, that’s what you’ve projected on me by your observations). Haha. I had SO much fun singing it though. Some of the girls danced while Amanda sang some back up harmonies. I don’t know how I knew all the words….lol…

We went out for “dinner” with the professors and principal afterwards. Aubrey heard we were having pizza and got really excited. No, no. We had Korean pizza – it is like egg and seaweed and octopus (oh, which is growing slightly on me. Still very rubbery though). I don’t mind their pizza, but it is not the same at all. Also, we had deep friend jinsing, which is a root they commonly use in American tea, so I’ve heard. That was a stronger taste. Watching people’s poker face when they ate it was pretty priceless. Just strong flavor, although Eric will tell you he barely tasted it at all.

We learned Aubrey’s pinky finger on her one hand can’t extend the whole way. Kind of weird. We had prayer time after we got back to the campus (oh, I don’t think I had mentioned that this dinner they took us to the mountain to a place that specializes in vegetarian dishes).

It was a great day. I am still on my plan to read thru the Bible in 90 days. Today I couldn’t find my Bible this morning (I had left it in our meeting room from the night before) and I am a little behind the plan. However, I am still keeping a good pace, and should be done with Proverbs tomorrow – once I finish Psalms and start Proverbs haha).